• Table of Contents

• Changing Desktop Icons, Drives, Folders, Files, Shortcuts, System
  How to change various icons on your desktop.

• Using More Than 16 Colors, 256 colors, 64K Colors, 16M Colors
  Allow desktop to display icons with 256 or more colors

• Managing an Active Collection
  How to manage icons you commonly use on your system.

• Deriving Your Own Icons
  Create your own icons using Icon Library as your starting point.

• Icons as Bitmaps, Web Pages, ClipArt, Photoshop, GIF, JPG
  Save icons as bitmap images and use them in web pages and other art.

Changing Desktop Icons
Drives  |  Folders  |  Files  |  Shortcuts  |  System

1. The system icons associated with My Computer, Network Places/Neighborhood and the Recycle Bin can be easily changed. These instructions should work for Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. These instructions will not work for Windows XP.

2. Right click on your computer desktop and select the Properties menu item. Click on the Effects tab.

   

3. In this example, the icons for My Computer will be changed. The other icons can be changed in a similar manner. Select the My Computer icon by clicking the left mouse button on it. Click on the Change Icon button.

   

4. Clicking on the Change Icon button causes this window to be displayed.

   

   Either type in the full pathname for the icon or icon library containing the icon to be used, or click on the Browse button and navigate to the directory containing the required icon.

   

   Make sure you select All Files in the Files of type: dropbox. Double-click on one of the icon files, for example 256multi.icl, and a window showing all available icons will appear.

   

5. Select the icon you want to use for My Computer and click the OK button.

   

6. The selected icon will now be associated with My Computer.

   

   Click on the OK button or the Apply button for the change to take affect. Here are the before and after images for the changes made in this example.

    

   
   

7. You can change the other system icons in the same way that the My Computer icons was changed.

8. Does your desktop show the My Computer icon with more than 16 colors? If not, then you may need to set your computer to display more than 16 colors.